Yummy Dessert!

Do you have an ice cream maker? If so, you have a magical machine that can create deliciously sweet, yet healthy, desserts! My recent favorites: 1- pouring all natural white grape juice into the ice cream machine until it is thick and slushy, then showering it with fresh raspberries. 2- Good Earth sells an all natural Coconut Pineapple juice that slushes up into the most deliciously healthy Pina Colada dessert you have ever had! Play around with other all natural fruit juices and see which ones are your favorites. They are so darn tasty, especially on a hot summer day, and instantly takes care of that sweet tooth.

The Message

I read such a wonderful book yesterday that I had to tell you all about it! It is a short book (about 150 pages) and is written by a man who was in a coma for 3 months and during that time was taken to the spirit world, where he saw, heard, and experienced things that were absolutely remarkable. I have read a couple books similar to this one in that they also convey “life after death” experiences but I have never read a book like this that left me feeling so comforted about death and gave me such an enlightening perspective check about our life before, during, and after this one. This book goes into profound detail and relays it with stunning accuracy (you will see what I mean). Heart warming and truly inspirational, you won’t be able to put it down. lol, I sound like an official book reviewer hey? Cory and Cory give it two thumbs up! Honestly though, for those of us who have lost loved ones in our lives, this story will have a permanent impact on you. And for the rest of us.. well who hasn’t ever wondered what it will be like when we leave this world? The jacket makes this book look ancient but it was actually just published in 2000. I highly highly recommend it!! It is only $10 new from amazon.com or used for as little as $4. It will be the best $4 you’ve ever spent! If you want to, click on the book image above and it will take you to Amazon. Happy Reading!

Ole Blue Eyes

Our first mini-photo shoot! Yes, it only took 6 months for Sammy to let me put him down long enough to actually get “planned” pictures and it was very short lived lol, but I got some! And I must say they are adorable.  I was surprised at how the light made his features really stand out. His eyes were so blue and his lips were so red that it looked like he was wearing makeup. That’s one beautiful boy we have!

I couldn’t resist the picture with Sammy staring at his hand. His hand continues to be his main source of interest lol. It constantly side tracks him. He will be laughing so hard at something and then catch a glimpse of his hand and immediately stop laughing to stare at it lol.  I do have to say that I also think his chubby little hand is stare-worthy.  These bottom pictures are Sammy signaling me (after only 5 minutes or so) that he is in fact, DONE with the photo-shoot!

"She thinks I'm plumpy……."

Rolls, rolls, and more rolls! It’s hard to think of something that I love more right now than my baby’s thighs lol. They have actual rolls! And he has dimpled buns lol. Oh my gosh. Is there anything cuter?! I am going to say “no.”

I can’t help but think of Madagascar 2 when I see our little guy naked lol. You have to picture the proud voice of the hippo while you recite to yourself… “She thinks I’m huge… she thinks I’m plumpy…. she loves me for my eyes… she loves me… she loves me for my thighs… she loves me..”

Caledon Baked Oatmeal

Ok, in light of the insane April snowstorms that we’ve been having, I figured that I could still get away with throwing in another fabulous wintery dish. If you like oatmeal, this recipe is so so yummy!!! The first time I made it, I ended up making it 3 days in a row lol. YUM! Tosca Reno (the creator), says it is the most forgiving dish and I totally agree. You can throw anything into it and it always turns out delicious! In the spring she recommends throwing in raisons and vanilla, in the winter she recommends plenty of cranberries, cinnamon and nutmeg (which I am a big fan of!). Dress it up any way that you like!

- 2 cups old-fashioned oats

- 2 cups low-fat or skim milk or the liquid of your choice

- 1/2 tsp best-quality vanilla

- 1/2 cup slivered almonds

- 1/2 cup dried cranberries or dried fruit of your choice

- 1 large unpeeled, firm MacIntosh apple, grated

- 4 Tbsp maple syrup (the cooking kind, not the sugar diluted pancake topping)

- cooking spray

Preparation:

1- Preheat  oven to 400 degrees. Coat a large (3 qt) casserole dish with cooking spray.

2- Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. If you are preparing this the night before, don’t add the liquid ingredients like milk and the grated apple until morning.

3- Place mixture in  casserole dish. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes. (towards the end of cooking time, watch carefully… this dish can go from perfectly tender to crispified very quickly.)

WHY  IS  IT  HEALTHY? : Cranberries are rich in flavonoids, which have been found to possess anticancer, antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory properties. Oatmeal is a miracle substance in and of itself. Oats offer super-charged nutrition! They are loaded with vitamins, minerals, soluble fiber, phytonutrients, antioxidants and more. It is the only whole grain PROVEN to remove cholesterol, lower blood pressure, help maintain regular bowels, and reduce heart disease. This meal also has little-to-no fat or sugar but has a good amount of protein to help lower weight and strengthen muscle.

The Best Split Pea Soup you will ever taste!

Now, I have to tell you, I had never tasted Split Pea Soup before. So no, I wouldn’t be considered an expert on this dish. But I made it and I LOVED it. I then shared it, and everyone else LOVED it. And this post can be credited mostly to my sister in-law Cori, who IS an expert taster on Split Pea Soup , has loved it for many years, and after tasting this one, said: “Cory, this is the BEST Split Pea Soup I have EVER had!!!” Hence the title. You’ll love it! Throw in some homemade bread and the family will eat this up!

Deliciously Healthy!

Ok, so in my new found determination to kick the old pregnancy cravings that have now turned into daily habits 6 months later, I am trying to dive into eating healthier. This is bittersweet because the good news is that I actually do prefer, and enjoy, eating healthy. The bad news is that finishing every meal with a large bowl of Dryers Extra Creamy Rocky Road ice cream (occasionally adding more mini marshmallows) for 9 months straight, creates addictions that were never there before lol. So although I am in a spot right now where eating healthy is a jump of pure determination and not gleeful anticipation, I have actually poured my love for cooking into finding new recipes that create healthy, strong bodies, and actually taste divine as well! It seems to me that most of us would feed our bodies good, clean, healthy food, more often, if it only tasted better. So I thought I’d post some of my new favorites. Now stop…. no, this is not going to become a cooking blog lol. Mostly because I worry that my love of creating culinary masterpieces would take over and you would never see pictures of my family again. But I AM adding a link on my blog over here on the right, to post some of those healthy recipes that I think are truly tasty for those of you needing to expand that list of recipes that won’t leave you with all that extra padding. Enjoy!

Bitter Beer Face!

LOL! This little face just “appeared” one day and hasn’t gone away since. When I brush my teeth in the morning with my electric toothbrush, Sammy likes to put the other end of it in his mouth while it vibrates his entire jaw bone lol. Well, a few days ago when he was doing that, he must have suddenly become aware of his bottom lip because he immediately started sucking on it and now I can’t get him to stop. The funny thing is that Jared is also constantly sucking on his lower lip. His own, not Sammy’s. So this might be a trick that’s around to stay!

Happy Valley

Everywhere I go, I hear people complaining about Utah. Utah is too cold, Utah is too conservative, nothing is open on Sunday lol, Utah is too desert-like, Utah is too hot, Utah is too ugly, Utah is full of hypocrites, Utah this and Utah that. To which, I always curiously wonder, “If you don’t like Utah… why don’t you move? And if you don’t want to move… why not find some things that you really like about your life here?” I have to speak carefully though for two reasons: 1-because most of the people I get to hear regularly complain are my friends and I don’t want them to leave lol, and 2-because I have to admit that there was a time in my own life when I joined in on the bash-Utah bandwagon…. but then I got to see the world and was able to come home appreciating so many things about Utah that I just never saw before. If you need some help recognizing the positives, here are a couple things I’ve learned:

1- Our state is so clean!!!! lol I know this seems like an odd one but after visiting so many big cities that are absolutely filthy, it is so refreshing to come home to clean mountain air and tidy streets and sidewalks. (yes, those big cities have lots of other wonderful things about them but this list is not talking about how great those places are, it is about how great Utah is. )

2- The people here are so genuinely nice. For the most part, we have a larger majority of people (than anywhere that I have been so far) who genuinely care about complete strangers and often look for opportunities to help each other out without ever being asked. This is something in and of itself that is so amazing to watch.

3- Our winters are absolutely beautiful and not even a tenth as cold as some places back east we have visited. I have always loved our snow but got easily annoyed at the cold… however now that I have endured places where the cold actually pierces your very core (like stabbing knives) and gives you INSTANT migranes and earaches, regardless of how warmly you are dressed, I have a little better perspective and am now grateful that we have mild winters.

4- The people here (and everywhere else for that matter) are not hypocrites, they are human. This one took me a very long time to realize. I would watch mothers bear their testimonies at church about how much they loved their kids and then they would go sit down and through clenched jaws and gritted teeth, growl warnings and consequences if they didn’t sit down and shut up. I spent years being bothered at the number of “hypocrites” I encountered regularly. Then one day it smacked me right upside the head, for no particular reason: they are not hypocrites! They are human beings (with faults) who genuinely believe in a certain way of living and acting…. try hard to actually do those things on a daily basis…. and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don’t. But they don’t give up. If you ask me, that is something to be applauded not criticized. And at the same time that this epiphany came, another one came: There is not an “I” and a “they”. We are all in the same boat. We are all human. We all have faults. We all try to do what we think is right and sometimes we nail it and sometimes we miss by a long shot… But every day is a chance to start over. We should be helping each other by being supportive and not critical. I also realized that I don’t want people judging me that closely lol, so I stopped judging everyone else. What goes around, comes around. I am much more compassionate now lol.

5- We have spectacular mountains. Sure they aren’t quite as impressive as some… but we have them! And they are so beautiful. Just a 15 minute drive, run, or bike ride up the canyon is guaranteed to cure any feelings of irritation. There are cities full of high rise apartments where you can reach out through a window and touch the next building and continue this experience for miles and miles. Where the only “play area” is a 15×15 foot patch of grass in a designated area, squished down in between 14-story slabs of concrete. To be able to get out in the open and explore and have picnics, barbecues, go on hikes, take walks, have high points to go paragliding off of, rivers to lazily float down, and lakes to dive into, is a blessing that you just can’t imagine unless you’ve been elsewhere.

Something I’ve noticed: Often times when people are complaining about Utah, it is because they are comparing it to another place. Comparing people or places is never a good idea because one or the other will always fall short. Instead I’ve learned to recognize the positives that Utah has to offer without comparing it to anything. Just learning to admire it’s own kind of beauty and realizing what it has to offer without making it regularly fall short of paradise. This alone helped me reach a very “zen” place about this great state lol and now I am just overflowing with positive things to say about it.  Love these pictures? Check them out at http://www.willieholdman.com . Have more great things to add to this list of reasons Utah is fabulous? Let’s hear ‘em!

The 3 Stages Of Calphalon Destruction!

So about 5 years ago I discovered cooking. I don’t know what happened. I went from being someone who got impatient at the time it took to microwave a bag of popcorn, to thinking that a great Friday night was one that was spent chopping, dicing, kneading, mixing, brining, basting, sauteing, baking, broiling, and grilling. I got to know the staff at Williams Sonoma by name and spent literally hours learning how to do things as simple as boiling water lol (I knew NOTHING about cooking so I was starting from scratch). Those of you who know me well, know that I don’t like doing things half way. When I want to learn about something, I dive into it headfirst. It consumed all my spare time. The more I learned, the more l LOVED it!!! After spending a couple years in culinary bliss, I concluded that every artist needs the right tools and I decided to buy my very first set of professional pots and pans. I researched and saved and the day I went in to make my purchase, I couldn’t stop smiling lol. When I got them home I carefully unwrapped each pan and gently placed them in their proper place in the cupboard. I went to bed that night feeling that all was right with the world My pans and I were going to have a long and delicious life together.

Well, over the next year, I learned something incredibly disheartening: Very few people, if any, will ever care for my carefully saved for pots and pans, as much as I do. As you may, or may not know, putting a professional grade pan in a dishwashing machine is the quickest way to send it to it’s death. I didn’t know how this caused damage, or why, but I blindly and wholeheartedly agreed to lovingly hand wash every single pan for the rest of my life. What I didn’t count on were the many wonderful people in my life whom after family meals would be kind enough to do my dishes for me and out of innocent ignorance, or in some cases, lazy defiance, would put my beautiful pans in their detergent filled coffin. The first time it happened, I almost had a heart attack as I opened up our dishwasher to put away the clean load and saw my gorgeous saucepan trapped inside. But I inspected it carefully and breathed a sigh of relief that it didn’t look wounded in anyway. In fact, after a couple of these indiscretions they still seemed just fine so I began to loosen the apron strings and accepted that no matter how many times I asked people to hand wash my pans, it just wasn’t going to happen all the time and I was going to relax about it. I became so relaxed about it that I even found myself putting them in the dishwasher from time to time. My pans slowly began to turn a lighter grey color but they still cooked fabulously so I just assumed that the “damage” from putting pots in the dishwasher was limited to defiling their aesthetic appearance but not effecting their fabulous cooking capability. They changed ever so slowly but one day I opened my dishwasher and realized that I had killed my soup pot. I now have first hand understanding of why you don’t put professional grade pans in the dishwasher. Wanna see?? Ok… here you go:

The first picture is of one of my pans, after 2 years of regular use, that has only been hand washed. It looks just as good as the day I bought it and cooks beautifully! The second and third pictures are of one of my pans that has been occasionally put in the dishwasher over the last couple years. You can see that the outside is starting to deteriorate faster than the inside but it still cooks wonderfully well. The fourth, fifth, and sixth pictures are of my poor soup pot that has been put in my dishwasher very regularly. Keep in mind that these are all from the same set. Purchased at the same time.

As you can see, the dishwashing detergent has literally started eating away at my infused-anodized aluminum. I can no longer use my soup pot. It feels so chalky that you can’t touch it without cringing and the inside bottom of the pan is starting to grit. It is starting to rub off on food making it unusable. So why should you not put your pots and pans in the dishwasher? Because it does actually ruin your pans. It isn’t just overprotective corporate officers encouraging consumers to hand wash just to see how far their power actually reaches. Dishwasher detergent actually destroys a steel hard enough to be placed under a 1500 degree broiler. Go figure. So take my advice: if you are going to spend decent money on cookware, be willing to care for them. If you know ahead of time that you just aren’t willing to take the time to do that, get your pans at Wally-World so you don’t feel sick when they fall apart.